Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Indian mafia

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The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was keep. As Organised crime in India  Sandstein  06:14, 16 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Indian mafia[edit]

Indian mafia (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) – (View log)
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This is not a WP:NOTABLE topic. Some of the organizations mentioned in here are notable enough for their own articles, but I am unable to find a single book about the "Indian mafia" in general. It does not seem that these groups are normally covered as a single unit, in the same manner as the Sicilian mafia, etc. I think the content of this article should be merged into the articles for the groups that it covers, and then this one should be deleted. Mesoderm (talk) 07:12, 30 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Can you explain to me how it is that you were "unable to find" this book? I really want to know how that happened. —chaos5023 (talk) 04:00, 8 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]
See my response below regarding this extremely low quality source, and the overwhelming (1900 to 2) usage of "organized crime" + India vs "Indian mafia" in university sources. ~ Mesoderm (talk) 07:31, 8 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep It seems that Bollywood at least recognizes the Indian mafia. Some of the material, for instance about individual bank robbers, should be removed. Kitfoxxe (talk) 11:44, 30 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, there are Bollywood films about imaginary organized criminals, and several of those films are notable enough to warrant their own articles. However the notion of the "Indian mafia" (analogous to the Sicilian mafia) does not exist in the large majority, if any, of these films; nor does it exist in books, news articles, etc. For example, Nayagan might portray Varadarajan Mudaliar, and both the film and Mudaliar are WP:NOTABLE. However this does not mean that we can just make up a concept called "Indian mafia" to group all of the things like Mudliar and the Bollywood movie into. The concept of "Indian mafia" itself is not notable enough to warrant an article. (i.e. If all we can find are one or two Bollywood references to it, then it's not an appropriate topic for an encyclopedia article.). ~ Mesoderm (talk) 17:35, 30 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Please don't make personal attacks. I have no personal connection to India, and don't give a shit one way or the other if bad things are said about it. I nominated this article for the reasons I described in the nomination. That said, the reason that we have an article on Russian mafia is that there actually is a Russian mafia to which scholarly sources regularly refer by that name. Compare this and this and this. ~ Mesoderm (talk) 03:46, 8 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]
You realize that the sense in which there is a "Russian mafia" is no more or less than the sense in which "mafia" has become a generic for organized crime, the way Kleenex became a generic for facial tissue, right? Which makes the assertion that there is organized crime in India but there is no "Indian mafia" a little bizarre. —chaos5023 (talk) 03:58, 8 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Note: This debate has been included in the list of India-related deletion discussions. — • Gene93k (talk) 17:56, 1 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Note: This debate has been included in the list of Crime-related deletion discussions. — • Gene93k (talk) 17:56, 1 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete: Indian Mafia is not a Notable topic. The information could be merged into the Mafia Raj article or the Corruption in India. --Vic49 (talk) 23:15, 1 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete There is organised crime in india, but not in the same form as other mafias, like the nom points out. --Sodabottle (talk) 12:19, 2 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    • The issue isn't whether Indian organized crime resembles organized crime in other regions, but whether this topic receives sufficient coverage in reliable sources to support a claim that it's notable. It pretty clearly is. —chaos5023 (talk) 21:28, 7 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete or change the title--Carnold30 (talk) 19:29, 4 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete per nom--Wikireader41 (talk) 21:23, 4 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep. Source review shows highly likely notability as coherent concept. In particular, addressing one of nom's raised concerns, see this book. A skim of the Google News links shows a pretty solid degree of currency for the term in RSes. —chaos5023 (talk) 21:13, 7 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Please also note that this article's AfD notice was improperly removed on July 1st, two days after nomination, and not restored until July 7th. —chaos5023 (talk) 21:22, 7 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion so a clearer consensus may be reached.
Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, Spartaz Humbug! 03:02, 8 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment: As the nominator, I would support keeping if the article title was changed to Organized crime in India, which actually is a notable topic. ~ Mesoderm (talk) 03:25, 8 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    If the topic has clearly WP:GNG-satisfying topic as "Indian mafia", how is it not a notable topic as-is? I mean, I already pointed you at the entire book whose title is identical, modulo grammatical article, with the article's topic (y'know, the one you were apparently unable to see at the top of the Google Books results when you wrote the nom), and the term is all over Gnews. —chaos5023 (talk) 03:28, 8 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]
The book from APH Publishers seems a bit dubious to me -- not just the low publishing quality and lack of citations, but the fact that I can't find anything about the editorial quality of the publishing outfit (which apparently can't even muster a working website). It does not seem like it satisfies WP:RS. It is also very odd that there are so many scholarly books and papers talking about Organized crime in India, and that none of them use the term "Indian mafia". You'd think that if an "Indian mafia" actually existed, that these books on organized crime would mention it, wouldn't you? ~ Mesoderm (talk) 03:37, 8 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]
If the book is questionable, shrug, okay. In my experience at AfD, usually a source gets a fair amount of weight if it has an ISBN unless there's something radically wrong with it (like being one of those Books LLC pustules). Even so, this query has nineteen pages of results -- I mean, dude. That's a lot. The equivalent query at Google Scholar readily shows your assertion about scholarly sources to be blatantly false, even if I would expect the term to show up less often in material for a scholarly audience just because it's "street" in tone. The fact that you bring up the question of the existence of an "Indian mafia" seems kind of telling, to me -- going with the undertone to this whole thing that you, and maybe WikiProject India, don't like anybody saying there's an "Indian mafia". But it's not really relevant; the issue here is whether reliable sources cover the topic, not whether the topic exists. If we had an AfD on Gandalf, his existence wouldn't be the issue. —chaos5023 (talk) 03:51, 8 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]
You didn't respond to what I said about the organized crime books. Why do you think that of the 1900+ books from University Presses that mention organized crime in India, that not a single one of them talks about the "Indian mafia"? ~ Mesoderm (talk) 04:39, 8 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Sure I responded; I thought my Google Scholar link was refuting it. But if what we're doing is hitting Google Books with inpublisher:university, okay, try this query. Why it never occurs alongside the term "organised crime" within the Google Books corpus of university press works, how would I know? The most likely thing would seem to be that the term doesn't have a lot of currency in university presses. I don't find this shocking, and it pretty much goes to what I wrote below. —chaos5023 (talk) 04:54, 8 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I provided you with 1900+ links from university presses that talk about "organized crime" in India, 0 of which use the phrase "Indian mafia". You provided me with a search query that returned 10 items. Of these 10 you provided, 7 actually talk about organized crime in India. (2 talk about American Indians, and one is about a racist term used for Indian software company owners/investors in Silicon Valley). Of the 7 that are actually use the phrase "Indian mafia" in relation to crime in India, two are about Bollywood; 2 of them use quotes around "Indian mafia" as if it is slang; one says "were portrayed as a kind of Indian mafia"; another says "assignment that was later headlined The Indian Mafia"; and one actually says "There appears to be no Indian Mafia ...". You have hardly made a convincing case. Anyhow, I'm going to let other people share their opinions for a bit. If 1900 to 2 scholarly sources (if you count the Bollywood references, which I think should be in a subsection of the Organized crime in India article) can't convince you that Organized crime in India is the WP:COMMONNAME, then I don't know what can. ~ Mesoderm (talk) 07:17, 8 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]
P.S. Regarding your Google scholar results, "indian mafia" -"american indian" -"native american" returns 64 results, while "organized crime" india returns 17,400. Again, your "evidence" is hardly refuting my point, only supporting it further. ~ Mesoderm (talk) 07:47, 8 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]
But, okay. The thing is, the term "Indian mafia" clearly has way more than enough coverage for it to be notable. But if it really is a significantly minority term for Indian organized crime, then the right thing to do isn't to delete this article (because notability doesn't support deleting it), it's to write a more general-scope Organised crime in India, drawing on all these scholarly sources that cover that topic and so on, and cross-reference between the articles as appropriate. That way, Indian mafia can cover the specific topic of what's discussed in reliable sources under that name, and refer to Organised crime in India for a broader perspective, and vice versa. Then we have a state of affairs that adequately reflects the treatment the material gets in our sources, and we don't have to abuse the notability guidelines in deleting a topic that clearly satisfies them. —chaos5023 (talk) 04:11, 8 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep - per multiple reliable sources.--BabbaQ (talk) 11:12, 8 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep as the topic is clearly notable -- and rename to Organised crime in India, as the term 'Indian Mafia' doesn't appear to be in common usage. A Google search indicates that the terms seems to be more associated with Native Americans than Indians.--Johnsemlak (talk) 11:50, 8 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep The Indian mafia is real and is headquartered in the Silicon Valley but the term is usually used tongue-in-cheek (at least in the early years) and it refers to the roughly 200,000 Indians who work in the software/tech. industry of the valley. Amongst it's members is Vinod Khosla whose wife Neeru Khosla is on the advisory board of the Wikimedia foundation. Numerous Bay Area newspapers can be cited as sources for this but here's a CNN Money article. Obviously the article title needs to be renamed and the various contexts need to be set correctly. Zuggernaut (talk) 16:32, 8 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    That's... not what this article is about. —chaos5023 (talk) 17:08, 8 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]
That's the point. We have plenty of content for it to grow. It may even become a good or a featured article someday. I agree though that it should renamed "Organized crime in India". There are also the links between the Mumbai criminal Dawood Ibrahim (currently in Pakistan) and the Pakistani ISI, the links to terrorism, etc that can be covered in the article. Zuggernaut (talk) 18:52, 8 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep, rename, expand. It seems to me that the topic of the article is notable enough, but to read the article gives one the impression that there is not a singular "Indian Mafia" but rather a collection of different groups which would fall under the heading of "Organized Crime in India". I don't think the article should be renamed due to any sense of "offensiveness", but rather for the sake of accuracy. --Eastlaw talk ⁄ contribs 21:04, 8 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep and move to Organised crime in India, or similar name, as discussed. The title is attested, but POV and more offensive than the neutral "Organized crime in X nation" type of title. Another rescue? Bearian (talk) 23:59, 11 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep Google news archive search shows 122 results. The news media does in fact refer to an Indian mafia, and even refers to their leaders as dons. If this is an improper use of the term, then just rename the article Organized crime in India as others have suggested. Dream Focus 11:50, 13 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]
The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.
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